Thursday, December 3, 2015

Review: The Trouble With Destiny by Lauren Morrill

The Trouble With Destiny

Summary:

It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey...

With her trusty baton and six insanely organized clipboards, drum major Liza Sanders is about to take Destiny by storm—the boat, that is. When Liza discovered that her beloved band was losing funding, she found Destiny, a luxury cruise ship complete with pools, midnight chocolate buffets, and a $25,000 spring break talent show prize.

Liza can’t imagine senior year without the band, and nothing will distract her from achieving victory. She’s therefore not interested when her old camp crush, Lenny, shows up on board, looking shockingly hipster-hot. And she’s especially not interested in Russ, the probably-as-dumb-as-he-is-cute prankster jock whose ex, Demi, happens be Liza’s ex–best friend and leader of the Athenas, a show choir that’s the band’s greatest competition.

But it’s not going to be smooth sailing. After the Destiny breaks down, all of Liza’s best-laid plans start to go awry. Liza likes to think of herself as an expert at almost everything, but when it comes to love, she’s about to find herself lost at sea.

Review:

If I would have to describe The Trouble With Destiny in one sentence it would be:
A easy, entertaining cute & fluffy that's predictable in all the best ways.

Predictable is THE word for the story line. It's extremely predictable. It goes from A to B to C. None of the twists will surprise anyone. But nonetheless it's enjoyable. It's cute and fun. So exactly what it does promise. A bit of angst, some lovey-dovey stuff, a dash of swoony and a whole lot of fun topped off with the HEA. Talking about that- it was a wee bit to happy clappy for me. I mean everything got solved. BUT ignore my cynical heart over here. It was cute and fun as well, so I didn't mind much about that.
FUN is the second word I would use for the story line. This is a string of fun and funny situation cleverly woven to a cute story. There are many good moments, I can't recount my favorite. In fact I think this would make a great rom-com film actually. But it is a wee bit rom-com cliche as well.
But as the blurb states: It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey...
And the journey is well worth it.

I think the trick to a sassy cute & fluffy is not to over complicate or over indulgence, it's being fun and light and to the point. Morrill get's it right in this one, in my opinion. Her writing style is contemporary and easy, yet very enjoyable. Again just right for this genre.

The characters started off super cliche. The mandatory gay friend as example, the jock, the geek, the queen biatch... And some things stayed very cliche. The villain for starters- so cliche, so so so cliche. But most of the characters got deeper and more interesting as the book progressed. I really like the group of friends, I even loved the oldies (again a bit on the cliche side but I couldn't care less, I adore them)
Though this is very light hearted Morrill did a great job at the character building. I feel like I know the group of friends and their dynamic.
This is told from Liza POV. So we look at everyone through her rather opinionated eyes. Liza is a bundle of angst half the time- ok most of the time. But she is endearing and relatable. More importantly she is not annoying. I love how she slowly changed her views on things, how she realised certain things she was totally stuck on, but mostly how loyal she was to her friends.
Russ was cute. SO cute. I love how one gets to discover more and more about him as the book progresses and how he keeps on surprising Liza. The jock has more depth that even I expected.
Lenny on the other hand was too cliche and predictable. My least favorite character. In fact he was just ...meh.
Demi was a good antidote to Liza. And while I like how that particular thing got resolved, I felt it was way too fast, so a wee bit unbelievable. Still it's great to discover her other side as well. Seriously cool.
All in all the characters while rather predictable at times also have surprising depth.

The Trouble With Destiny gave me exactly what I expected. Which left me uber-happy. I needed a good cute & fluffy fix. And this delivered 100%. I read this in one setting. And honestly I couldn't think of a better way I could have spend my Saturday morning.
Cute & fluffy perfection.

Rating:

ARC was provided by Publishers through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review